Today, BEIS finally issued its official response to the 2016 consultation. You can access it here. Their public statement about it is here. As for the statement, I don't think I've ever seen as big a pack of lies issuing from a government department. Literally, every single sentence is untrue.
 
As for the response itself, the first thing to consider is that it was forced on BEIS by the EAC's damning report. The 2016 consultation itself was forced on BEIS by press intervention regarding my whistle-blowing case that highlighted the fact BEIS was, once again, sitting on safety changes for no good reason.
 
Bottom line of the response? BEIS is not going to implement any of the proposals in the consultation. Instead it is going to take a different course of action that was not in the proposals at all. I'm not sure this is even legal; at the very least it's caused hundreds of stakeholders five years worth of work, waiting, being consulted, responding, having to chase BEIS endlessly via letters, forced meetings, etc – and all to be told at the last minute that none of it counted anyway.
 
In short, BEIS is dismantling the Regulations and handing over responsibility to manufacturers, combined with getting British Standards to come up with new standards. Which is rather confusing since the response also states that it is doing away with testing standards. To make new ones.
 
BEIS claims it has been working with British Standards (BSI) on this. But one of my sources there tells me there has been no communication at all with the BSI committee that deals with furniture fire safety standards. BEIS also seems to be totally unaware that it tried the same thing in 2015 – to get BSI to take over responsibility but BSI eventually refused, quite sensibly on the grounds that it did not want to get involved with regulations, especially ones that are so politically sensitive. BEIS may not know this because, believe it or not, it has no files or records from that period. They could of course have found out simply by reading this website, but then their main response in that respect has been to ban BEIS officials from looking at it at all.
 
Bottom line, consequences wise? Even if BSI agrees to take on this work, a normal, non-contentious standard takes about three years to produce. This however is very contentious so we are looking at 5/6 years before anything emerges. In the meantime, says BEIS, the current regulations will stay in place.
 
Which means at least another 500,000 tons of toxic flame retardants will get into UK homes and make fires hugely more toxic, thereby continuing to give firefighters above-normal levels of cancer – this from a Department that is apparently committed to reducing flame retardants in furniture.
 
As I've said before on this site, the fact is that the 2016 consultation was unimplementable. And here I'm going to name the two civil servants who are chiefly responsible for in effect consigning us all to at least 10 years of toxic poisoning in our own homes: Bridget Micklem and Phil Earl. These two went against Ministers' orders to implement the new match test in April 2016. BEIS lawyers advised that this could be done without another consultation. Micklem and Earl, without any input or agreement from Ministers, concocted the 2016 consultation and ensured it could never be implemented by the fact it was incomplete and contained contentious proposals that also had not been cleared by a Minister.
 
These two are the main culprits for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of UK children contracting cancers and other diseases. They are chiefly responsible for ensuring that firefighters will continue to battle the most toxic house fires in the world. These are the two who have no conscience and answer only to their egos. Not to mention the flame retardant industry's long history of buying up key officials.
 
Gareth Simkins described the Furniture Regulations to Mary Creagh, Chair of the EAC, when she first asked us about them as "The biggest-ever scandal in UK product history." I think he's right. And the scandal continues.
 
The head of the Office of Product Safety Standards – the part of BEIS now responsible for these regulations – Graham Russell, said this in a recent interview:
 
“What motivates me is that this is about protecting people – particularly the most vulnerable people. I think that’s what drives a lot of people in this area.”
 
Given his response today, this must rank as one of the most hypocritical, sociopathic and downright dishonest statements ever made by a public official. 
 
He is of course, like Micklem and Earl, a public servant who is supposed to serve us, the public. As I recorded in an earlier blog, this is the man who, when I tried to talk to him about these regulations recently, shouted, "I'm not talking to you!" then barged me out of the way as he ran from the room.

Listen to Mary Greagh, Chair of the EAC, introducing the report here. 
 
The report itself is here.
 
There have been numerous press articles about the report but a very good one by Gareth Simkins of the ENDS Report is here.
 
Front page of the Daily Mail today below. Article here.

 
Yesterday, I was invited to attend a meeting in the House of Lords of the All Party Parliamentary Fire Safety and Rescue Group. Jon O'Neill of the Fire Protection Association gave a short talk on third party certification. He also talked about the need to update the Fire Safety Order, particularly in light of the Grenfell Tower fire. He and the FPA have talked a lot about the FSO recently but strangely have never mentioned the Furniture Regulations. This, despite O'Neill, along with Sir Ken Knight and Dave Sibert, having given a presentation to the Department of Business in December 2014 where they agreed that the current match test does not work and the new one will improve fire safety.
 
At the end of the meeting yesterday, I approached Mr O'Neill and asked him: "Where is the new test foam formula you insisted BEIS needed before putting the new match test in place?" There was quite a long pause then he said: "We passed it to British Standards."
 
Below is an entry from a paper I've written detailing the way that various parties blocked safety changes to the changes proposed by the government to the Furniture Regulations in 2014. It's based on BIS's meeting note and on the FPA's own presentation slideshow. I've mentioned before that Jon O'Neill was particularly aggressive over these changes, initially commanding my colleagues at the Department for Communities and Local Government to stop them. DCLG was not of course the department in charge of the Furniture Regs but then Mr O'Neill knew that. He also knew that Sir Ken Knight was the big fire chief at DCLG and had considerable influence over the officials working there on fire safety. In the event, two meetings were held in order for O'Neill, Sir Ken and others to try to bully BIS into dropping the changes. Unfortunately for them, the evidence that we had provided was unequivocal: the current test did not work and the new one would. 
 
Finally, O'Neill etc talked my BIS managers into a third meeting at which they said they would provide a new test foam formula for the new test – even though this was not needed since we already had one (that is actually in the current regulations). They did not come with the formula, however; instead they presented a delaying tactic (see below), i.e. that British Standards should be commissioned by BIS to spend 12 months coming up with a new test foam formula. As you can see from Mr O'Neill's follow up email to Bridget Micklem at BIS, he assumed that she had agreed they could go ahead. She did not reply to this email; however, the same suggestions were put to the minister, Jo Swinson, a few months later by amongst others, Dave Sibert and Paul Fuller (well-know lovers of flame retardants). She agreed. However, British Standards bailed at the last moment (in July 2015), informing the Chair of their relevant committee that they did not want to get involved in regulatory work especially when it was so politically sensitive. Since that time, changes to the Regulations remain blocked. BEIS did however go out to consultation once again in 2016 with exactly the same new match test proposal containing exactly the same test foam formula as proposed in 2014. In short, Mr O'Neill, Sir Ken Knight, etc, had done nothing more than hold up important safety changes for two years, and counting.
 
As I've recorded elsewhere on this website, I wrote to Sir Ken Knight twice in his capacity as Chair of the Grenfell Independent Experts Group, reminding him of the December 2014 meeting where he'd agreed that the current match test doesn't work and therefore to look at the role the failed Furniture Regulations played in the Grenfell fire. He didn't respond; neither has his panel ever even mentioned the Furniture Regulations. I also wrote to Jon O'Neill on the same lines who also did not reply.
 
Back to yesterday . . . I reminded Mr O'Neill that British Standards had refused that work, then asked him why the Fire Protection Association has done nothing about the fact the current match test fails in practice ever since (more than four years and counting), i.e. they're failing to protect the public from fire risk. To which he said, "We didn't agree the current match test fails." See below and make up your own mind about that.
 
But here's the thing: even if what he said was true, i.e. that in effect he believes the current match test works, why did he insist on a different test foam for the new test. Why not simply state that we should stick with the current one? Well, he was lying anyway. Just check out the third bullet point on his slide below: that the new test "should improve fire safety through the inclusion of materials which appear within 40mm of the cover fabric of a furniture product." Now I don't think I'm putting unfair interpretation on this but surely this is saying that because the current test doesn't allow for this effect, finished sofas are clearly not fire-safe? Also, a man apparently dedicated to fire safety has never since mentioned this failing of the current regulations.
 
At this point, Mr O'Neill was ushered away by a colleague, arm around his shoulder, to protect him from further questioning. Really, I'm not kidding. 
 
I've shown the links before between the FPA and the FR industry. One such being that after Dave Sibert was sacked by the FBU for colluding with the flame retardant industry (Matt Wrack's words), he was offered a lucrative new job by Jon O'Neill running the FPA's new test laboratory.
 
Does the FPA really care about fire safety? Well, I think that depends on who's paying them.
 
Oh, by the way, that colleague of Mr O'Neill's said that I should not be making these these claims (such as they were) without proof. If he's reading this blog, I suggest he checks out the entry below.
 
* * * 
 
Third meeting with the FPA/FSF – December 16, 2014
 
Sir Ken Knight, Jon O'Neill and Dave Sibert attend for the FPA/FSF (Fire Sector Federation). They start by giving a presentation, the essence of which is that they agree the new match test will work and that the current one has many problems. But they do not as agreed provide a new test foam formula. Instead, they insist that BIS commissions the British Standards Institute to 'fast-track' (over 12 months) a new formula for the regulations, in the meantime suggesting that BIS should go ahead with an interim test. 
 
See key slide in the FPA/FSF's presentation at bottom of this entry.
 
The important bottom line here is that the FPA/FSF is agreeing with BIS's proposed test, even if they're falsely claiming these are all FSF proposals! The only addition they're making is that BIS should initially go ahead with the new match test but continue using the old test foam, while British Standards comes up with a new one. However, this is blatant back-covering since they know very well that BIS cannot simply introduce a new interim test: that would require another consultation and would in any case be an unfair burden on industry. On the last slide point: they have of course ensured that this issue has continued to drag on ever since. 
 
It’s perhaps worth mentioning here that there is no evidence at all that the British Standards Institute had agreed to these proposals. In fact, their actions over the meeting they hosted on July 15th suggests they did not. For example, they instruct the Chair at the last moment, that they want this whole subject off their agenda since it is too political for them and in any case they do not believe they should be involved in drafting legislation.
 
Immediately after the meeting, O'Neill writes to Bridget Micklem of BIS to thank her for the meeting and ask her views on their proposals (see email below). She doesn't respond, despite Terry advising that this proposal from the FPA is pivotal, i.e. it is a Yes or No situation: if BIS says Yes, then a) the new match test will surely be delayed for at least a year, and b) BIS will have accepted FSF/FPA/Sir Ken Knight as being the main authority on the FFRs, and that will mean they’ll be able to extend the delays indefinitely. Not responding is likely to be taken as Yes, as indeed proves to be the case when the FPA/FSF gets their proposal confirmed at the Minister's round-table meeting in February 2015.
 
 
From: Jon O'Neill 
Sent: 16 December 2014 14:43
To: Micklem Bridget (EU); Earl Philip (EUD); Mike Larking; Louise Upton; Ken Knight; Dave Sibert; Edge Terry (EUD)
Subject: Furniture Regulations.pptx
 
Bridget
 
Thanks for your time today. As promised please find enclosed copy of my presentation. Having got the support of individual insurers to the proposal I am speaking to the ABI tomorrow and will pass on ant comments that arise.
 
I look forward to receiving your feedback to our proposal in due course.
 
Thanks & regards
 
Jon